A bit of Ely

Ely, Cambridgeshire, England.Population approximately 10,000.  As you might expect there are a lot of eels in the local river - the Great Ouse. The 'Ship of the Fens' rises above the isle.  16 miles north of Cambridge, it has a 1300 year old Cathedral, 'Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity'. Well, some of the foundations are 1300 years old. Like my grandfather's axe.

O K, to be fair, what we think of as Ely was founded by Etheldreda, Queen of Northumbria, in 673. Maybe the King got tired of her. She spent the rest of her life as Abbess to her monastry until 679.

You can blame an Abbot Simeon for founding the Cathedral in 1081. A magnificent example of Romanesque architecture was completed in 1118. The Normans really stamping their foot down on Hereward the Wake's last stand. Herward was a Saxon Thegn. Nice word.

The damn thing fell down in 1322. The central part, that is. A bright spark who was once a junior monk at Ely built a central Lantern over the choir. In distributing the weight Alan de Walsingham formed an octagon that is reminiscent of more oriental building.

Ely suffers from being close to Cambridge, in both cultural and economic terms. It is well to remember that previous Bishops of Ely founded some of the colleges that Cambridge's stature is based upon.

Ely is thriving. Since the huge sugar-beet factory at Queen Adelaide closed down in 1977 the area had been depressed. Now it is having a bit of a turn-around with the wealth generated by 'Silicon Fen'. Housing estates are being built right up to the boundaries of the Ely-Littleport by-pass. This is to house the 'bed&breakfasts' who commute to the businesses of the Silicon Fen and make the A10 road a bit of a nightmare at commuting time.

Yet on a good day the rail can take you to Cambridge in 15 minutes, and London in a little over an hour. You can tell how dated that statement was! Since the derailment at Hitchin [October 2000] and the subsequent discovery of miles of track in the same condition it can take hours for trains to reach Ely.

So-called progress has made a wilderness of the City Centre. Shops are closing or moving away from the centre. The central cinema closed more than a decade ago, along with the White Hart public house. The shops that were supposed to occupy the site have only now been attracted to the area.  The site of the old supermarket down Broad Street is now a wilderness. Before my time here the word is that they knocked down Tudor cottages to make way for the progress of supermarkets. Only 20 years later the supermarket moved to a more commercial site. Hundreds of years of cottages and twenty years of supermarket. Go figure.

Looking up the hill at night from there you have one of the most brilliant sights of an old mediaeval town - the illuminated 'Lantern' of Alain de Walsingham's that marks the centre of the Cathedral. You also have some of the saddest. Youths with more money than outlook drive to the car parks to loiter. Cars that I can only dream of and nowhere to go.